Monday (not Tuesday...) Night Update On Eta

November 9, 2020

I wanted to send out a quick update on Eta tonight. The bad news is that I don't think we know yet what it is going to do. The good news is that I don't think it will be a very strong storm wherever and whenever it makes landfall. From the NHC: "There is lower than normal confidence in the latter portion of the track forecast given the large spread in the guidance." I don't think the NHC cone is correct in the long term. I don't so much think that it is wrong, as in the NHC is wrong, only that the NHC is intentionally slow to make forecast adjustments and I don't think we've seen the end of the changes to the models. For the record, my "guess" yesterday that the storm would hit the Big Bend looks to be fairly unlikely at this point. So for now no more guesses from me...

Here are some models to illustrate the continued uncertainty:

Spaghetti (I see a shrimp with long antennae attacking the Panhandle, what do you see?): 

ECMWF (these are split between tracks to the southwest and north or northeast with most dissipating over water):

GEFS (GFS ensembles, most tracks seem to curve off to the northwest with many dissipating also):

UK (most members take the storm southwest into Mexico):

Notice that virtually all the tracks in the last three images are blues and greens indicating a weak storm. There are a lot of different solutions here with little consensus. If I had to pick a trend from all of these it seems like the curve off to the northwest is favored a bit at the moment, but we'll see how long that lasts. The HWRF currently takes a very weak storm into Apalachicola with the previous two runs showing a weak landfall in Louisiana so not much consistency there either.

So it looks like we have more watching and waiting. In other news subtropical storm Theta has formed way out in the Atlantic. This is noteworthy because 2020 has officially set the record for the most storms of any Atlantic Hurricane season on record. The thinking is that we may add 1-3 more storms before it is all over with. Speaking of that, the NHC identified another area of interest in the Caribbean later during the day on Sunday. This was the new system I mentioned we need to keep an eye out for as we get closer to the weekend. The NHC currently has this area at a 50% chance of development over the next 5 days.

That's it for this evening. I really don't think Eta is much of a threat but rightfully so most of you don't trust a storm farther than you can throw it...so let's see what it does.

Chris